Angel to Canvas Comparison Sheet for Faculty

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This chart shows common Angel 8.0 features, what those features are called in Canvas, and how they are different. In addition, there is a section showing Canvas features with no equivalent in Angel.

This list was originally created in 2012  (with the assistance of Elizabeth (Online Learning) Jackson) when we made our transition, but I tried to update it before posting it. If you have recommendations of things that should be added or changed, please comment and I'll update the chart.

Angel 8.0

Canvas

How is Canvas Different

Announcements

Announcements

  • Students can reply to announcements

Assessments

Quizzes

  • A quiz in Canvas can be a practice quiz, graded quiz, graded survey, ungraded survey.
  • EASY to extend test time for one student or add extra submission attempts.
  • Ability to schedule different opening times or days for individual students and/or course sections.

Attendance

Attendance

  • Ability to mark students as present, late, or absent
  • See student’s profile pictures
  • Arrange students in a seating plan
  • Can link to the gradebook
  • Can download attendance report

Automate tab

Prerequisites

  • Require students to complete a certain module before they can gain access to another module
  • Set requirements for what a student needs to do to complete a module. This includes students viewing something, contributing to a discussion, submitting an assignment, or scoring a certain grade.
  • Much more user-friendly compared to Angel

Calendar

Calendar

  • Drag & drop to make changes
  • Assignment due date changes made in your calendar are automatically updated everywhere else in the course.
  • View up to 10 classes at once with color-coded global calendar view
  • Use the Scheduler to student meetings
  • Copy calendar feed link into any app like Google Calendar, iCal, Outlook, etc.

Course Mail

Conversations (Inbox)

  • Messages can be forwarded out to the email of your choice and can come back into Canvas from your email!!
  • Functions more like a Facebook wall than an email inbox
  • No subject lines
  • Receive notifications via social web services, text, etc.

Course Tab

Home

  • Choose what content you want students to see when entering the course (Modules, Syllabus, Communication Stream, Assignment List, a page you create yourself)
  • View course analytics
  • View student progress for modules

Course Theme Selector

No Equivalent

  • Canvas does not allow individual course customization of themes/backgrounds

Discussions

Discussions

  • Only has the normal and post first options; does not have the private user/team journal, fishbowl, or hotseat.
  • Students can create new discussion topics
  • Can allow students to edit their posts
  • Students can’t easily add images to discussion threads.
  • Receive notifications via social web services, text, etc.

Dropbox

Assignments

  • Assignments can be submitted online through text entry, file uploads, media recordings, Google Docs, URL’s, or Canvas pages

Forwarding

Notifications

  • Pick where you want each different type of course activity information sent outside of Angel. Example: College email, other email address, text message, Twitter, etc.
  • Pick how often you want each different type of course activity information sent to you. Example: ASAP, Daily, Weekly, or Never.

Icons

No Equivalent

  • Canvas does not have the option for individualized icons

Instant Messenger

Chat

  • Ability to view chat history
  • Can't delete chat messages

Gradebook

Grades

  • Dashboard for students/instructors with overall grades and statistics
  • Faculty can enter grades and comments directly from here, but if the assignment was turned in to Canvas the best way to grade is using Speedgrader.
  • Students can figure hypothetical “what-if” grades.
  • Sort columns in one click by due date or assignment category
  • Student submissions are highlighted in red if the submission was turned in late.
  • Message students who haven’t submitted yet, scored less than or more than a specific grade on an assignment.
  • Learning Mastery Gradebook

Speedgrader

  • Speedgrader tool displays submitted assignment, grading rubric, and media comment options all on one page.
  • Easy to click from student to student when grading an assignment.
  • Add comments directly to student’s assignments (Word, PDF, Excel, & PowerPoint) within Canvas. No need to download the assignment, add comments and re-upload.
  • Add audio or video comments directly to assignments from within Canvas. All you need is a microphone or webcam.

Help

Help

  • Search the Canvas guides - these guides are actually useful!
  • Report a problem – where you report a problem in Canvas with your Institution and Canvas Support
  • Ask the Community – if you want you can ask the entire Canvas community a question
  • Request a feature – is there a feature you’d like to see in Canvas? Request it here!

Learning Object Repository (LOR)

Canvas Commons

  • Ability to share with yourself, anyone at your Institution, specific Institution sub-accounts, or will ALL Canvas users.
  • Ability to tag shared content and describe it.
  • Ability to set copyright and license restrictions

Lessons Tab

Modules

  • No folder system; Lesson folders are now modules
  • Individual modules (like folders) can be called anything you want, example: Week 1, Chapter 1, Unit 1, etc.
  • No layering of content in Modules (no folders inside of folders)
  • Drag & drop individual content items and entire modules
  • Easily and quickly set prerequisites so students have to go through course content in a certain order.

Live Office Hours

Conferences

  • Microphone/Audio (for instructor and students)
  • Webcam/Video
  • Desktop sharing
  • Upload documents (Word, PowerPoint, PDF) to share with students
  • Choose whether you’d like to invite all course members or specific students/individuals in the course
  • Ability to record conference session

Manage Tab

Settings

  • Course Details
  • Set-up course navigation
  • Student view
  • Course Statistics
  • Copy Course
  • Import Content into this course
  • Export Course Content
  • Reset Course Content

Preferences

Profile

  • Set your communication/notification preferences
  • Add a picture of yourself (avatar)
  • Link your web services to Canvas if desired (Twitter, Skype, etc.)

Question Banks

Question Banks

  • Question banks have to be added to each course you want to use the questions in.
  • No single repository for all your question banks.
  • If you change a question in your question bank it does not change in the quizzes that the question is being used in. You must update it everywhere.

Question Pool

Question Groups

  • Ability to pick a certain number of questions from a Question Bank
  • Must use Question Groups to randomize the order of questions

Reports

Course Analytics

  • See the number of page views each day and if user took an action within the course that day
  • View the percent of students who turned each assignment in on time, late, or didn’t turn it in at all.
  • View the grade distribution for each assignment
  • Quickly view overall page views, participation, and assignments turned in on time or late for each individual student.
  • Click on the students name for additional details.
  • Course Statistics

People

Below are for individual students

View Student Progress for Modules

  • View the progress of each student through the assignments for the course.

Roster

People

Below are for individual students

Rubrics

Rubrics

  • Ease of use – drag features to add columns
  • Can be used for grading or just feedback
  • Ability to free-form comments when assessing students
  • Can be linked to Assignments, Discussions, and Quizzes
  • Integrates seamlessly with Speedgrader for easy grading.

Standards

Outcomes

  • Can be created for division, course, or individual instructor.
  • Add Outcome Criterion directly to a rubric, assignment, or quiz question.

Student view

Student view

  • Creates a “Test Student” that you can test the contents of the course.
  • You can reset the student view to try things as many times as needed.

Teams

Groups

  • Is no longer associated with extended times or different days for assessments
  • Used as a collaboration tool for students who are working on projects or group assignments.
  • A group workspace is created where students can create pages, announcements, collaborations, discussions, calendar events, and chat in real-time

The following Canvas features are not available in Angel

Angel 8.0

Canvas

How is Canvas Different

No Equivalent

Assignments Page

  • Gradebook set-up happens here

No Equivalent

Collaborations

  • Usees Google Docs to allow multiple users to work together on the same document at the same time.
  • Collaborative documents are saved in real-time, meaning a change made by any of its users will be immediately visible to everyone.

No Equivalent

Crocodoc

  • Tool that allows instructor and peer review annotation (markup) in Canvas Speedgrader.
  • Instructors will not need to download papers, make comments, save and then re-upload the paper.  All of this can be done directly in Canvas.
  • Works for the following file formats (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, & PDF)

No Equivalent

e-Portfolio

  • Faculty can create their own e-Portfolio
  • Students can create their own e-Portfolio and share it with the instructor as an assignment.
  • e-Portfolio’s can be made public

No Equivalent

Files

  • These files are accessible to students via a tab/page unless you hide this tool or you lock files

No Equivalent

Inline Previewer (Box)

  • Inline viewing that allows students to view documents directly in Canvas without having the program on their computer. (Example: Word, PDF, PowerPoint, Excel, Open office files, Plain text, & Rich text)

No Equivalent

Peer Review

  • Ability to manually or automatically assign students to peer review other student’s assignments.

No Equivalent

Speedgrader

  • Grade papers by opening up paper within Canvas, adding audio or video feedback, adding notes or other annotations directly to the paper, and save it directly to Canvas in one step. No downloading into word, adding information, resaving it and re-uploading it.
  • Rubric opens in the same window as the document you are grading.
  • iPad app is available for grading, but currently the Crocodoc feature does not work.
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